Page 134 of The Rebel and the Rose
Edging closer, Anouk looked down on him, her expression turning quizzical. ‘Have you been a Dagger all this time, Bastian?’
He nodded. ‘Since the day we parted.’
‘You don’t look like one.’ Her brows knitted. ‘The others… Nadia and Caruso. They have those marks all over their hands. I know what they mean.’ Each one, a death. The shadow of every vial they’d swallowed. ‘But your hands are clean.’
A part of him wanted to laugh but when he lifted his hands to the moonlight, he remembered that she was right. ‘Theyweren’t always like this,’ he told her plainly. ‘For a long time, they were worse than most. Deep and dark and painful.’
‘But now they’re gone? How?’
‘There’s a woman, Anouk.’ He smiled without meaning to. ‘Another touched by fate. Her name is Seraphine, and the day she stumbled into my life, it exploded into colour. She saved me, heart and soul.’
And now I have to save her.
Anouk’s face lit up. ‘Tell me.’
‘Come,’ he said, rising from the bench. ‘I’ll tell you everything on the way to Marvale.’
After eating their fill in a nearby inn and telling Anouk of the insidious threat of Prince Andreas and the rebellion he was brewing in the heart of Valterre, they returned to the carriage, eager to be free of Ra’azule and the island skulking in the mist. Having seized the opportunity to wash and change at the inn, Anouk gratefully accepted a spare outfit from Nadia, before chucking her own ruined robes in the lake.
Now, with her long dark hair clean and braided away from her face, and her cheeks scrubbed of silt and dirt, she looked more like herself than ever. She was older by some years and changed by the hand of fate, but was still the same Anouk. Soft yet fearless, and ever eager to be at her brother’s side. They rode out front together, Ransom taking the first shift, while Caruso and Nadia polished off a bottle of wine and slept in the back of the carriage.
They journeyed on through the night. Guided by clear skies and a generous moon, they were kept awake by the chatter oftheir own voices as they swapped stories of their last ten years, painting in the edges of each other with the kind of giddy excitement Ransom hadn’t felt since he was a child, swapping fairy tales with Anouk under the duvet.
And when Anouk said, ‘Tell me about Seraphine,’ an entire world poured out of him. He barely took a breath, frustration pricking at him as he tried to put into words the very music of his soul, to explain that insistent thread in his chest that always tugged when she was near. The searing sense that she was his, and he was hers.
Talk of his spitfire only made his desire to return to her greater, his eagerness to face the prince making his throat tight. Never again would he let Andreas twist the fabric of his mind, not now he knew what the Silver-tongue was capable of. Not while he had Anouk at his side.
Sister.
Saint.
Secret weapon.
No. When Ransom returned to Marvale, their meeting would be quick and bloody.
It was a relief when dawn came, the waning moon fading in the sun-blushed sky. The red mills crowned the distant hills, farmland spilling out on either side of them, knitting a patchwork of green and gold. Sheep and cows slumbered in the yawning quiet, which was punctuated by the occasional cry of a rooster and Caruso’s gruesome snores.
Ransom’s sense of urgency gnawed at him, his heart pounding when the archway to Marvale finally appeared before them. He had forgotten to warn Anouk about thenightguards that hung from it. Retching at the sight, she leaned over the side of the carriage and vomited. ‘Whatisthis?’ she managed between heaves.
‘Andreas has a flair for dramatics.’ Ransom could forget sometimes how startling a dead body was to someone so unused to seeing them. Making them. ‘Sorry. I should have told you.’
The horse slowed as they drew closer. There was another body on the ground. Not a nightguard, but an older man in a flat cap, brown trousers and a crumpled work shirt. He was slumped on his side in the middle of the archway, blocking the way ahead.
Hopping down from the carriage, Ransom made his way towards the body. It whimpered as he approached. Coming to his knees, Ransom said, ‘You’re alive?’
Another whimper.
He rolled the man over, noting the deep bruises on his face, the bloodshot vessels in his eyes. He had been beaten to a bloodied pulp. With a struggling wheeze, he answered, ‘Barely.’
‘Ransom.’ Anouk was standing behind him. ‘There’s blood everywhere.’
Blood on the stones. Blood near the bridge. Blood dripping from the arch. ‘I know, Anouk.’
He turned back to the man. ‘What happened to you?’
He took three breaths to answer. ‘F-f-failed g-getaway.’
‘Ransom.’ Anouk’s voice was shaking now. It took him a moment to realize the cobbles were trembling too. Something groaned overhead. He looked up in time to see a crackfissuring down the middle of the arch, the stone on either side slowly giving way. ‘I c-c-can’t stop.’
